VICTORIA — As lead minister for B.C. on the looming discussions with the U.S. on the Columbia River Treaty, Bill Bennett has no illusions about what the province might be facing on the other side of the table.

“The Americans negotiate like the Boston Bruins play hockey,” said Bennett, referring to the elbows-up style of the team leading the Stanley Cup Final. “They are aggressive negotiators for their own interest.”

He was reacting to recent reports from south of the border on the emerging American position regarding the treaty, most provisions of which are subject to termination or renegotiation with 10 years notice starting September of next year.

The American agencies that manage the treaty, the Bonneville Power Authority and the U.S. army Corps of Engineers, take the view that B.C.’s share of the downstream benefits from the treaty should be reduced by about 90 per cent starting in 2024.

If that view were to prevail, then B.C.’s proceeds from electricity generated on the American side of the border, which brought in more than $3 billion over the past decade and a half, would be reduced to as little as $26 million a year.

“No doubt they would like to pay less money,” said Bennett, who once had to surrender his cabinet post over an inflammatory late-night email exchange with a constituent that included “cheap shots” on his part against Americans.

But he says the U.S. side needs to recognize that for every cost associated with the treaty provisions, “there are some very important benefits in terms of flood control” on a river that wreaked havoc on both sides of the border before being reined in by a quartet of dams and reservoirs.

“The treaty has been a huge success,” he continued. “It’s the best functioning international water management treaty in the world.”

Bennett is new to the energy ministry, other than a forgettable five-month stint late in Gordon Campbell’s time as premier. He’s not new to this file, having made it a mainstay of his concerns since he first sought office in 2001 as MLA for Kootenay East, a riding squarely in the midst of the Columbia basin.

Don’t go telling Bennett that the treaty has been an unmixed blessing for this province.

“It’s very easy, I can tell you, to go around the Columbia basin anywhere today and find people who were tossed out of their homes and basically told to move someplace else — given a chunk of land someplace that in most cases was not as nice as where they were living down by the river in the valley bottom, “ he reminded the legislature in 2003. “So 2,300 people were displaced and 60,000 hectares of high-value valley bottom land were flooded. Numerous First Nations archaeological and burial sites were submerged or buried.”

He’s suggested that next year’s opportunity to reopen the treaty could provide a basis for securing improvements. “Although I do not support terminating the Columbia River Treaty,” he wrote in an MLA letter published back in 2011, “I do support having an extensive discussion with the U.S. over issues such as reservoir water levels during the summer, about fish and wildlife investments and other social issues that were not considered when the treaty was first negotiated.”

Today he cautions against getting carried away by the temptation to seek improvements, given all the trade-offs that would be entailed in both countries. “It would be a little like letting the genie out of the bottle.”

He’s referring to all those considerations that “were not considered when the treaty was first negotiated.”

Essentially the treaty established a water-management regime in the primary interests of flood control and hydroelectric generation on both sides of the border. If it were to be reopened today, there’d be enormous pressure to revise the water-management provisions to the benefit of agriculture, the environment, First Nations, recreation and the fishery, to mention some of the more obvious possibilities.

With that cautionary attitude in mind, Bennett will be presenting some options to the cabinet this fall, with a view to crafting a strategy for whatever unfolds next year. He’ll be working from a series of position papers and public consultations being assembled by BC Hydro.

The giant utility is the lead agency for B.C. on the treaty and also, under the provisions of a remarkable federal-provincial agreement negotiated 50 years ago by Premier W.A.C. Bennett, the lead agency for Canada.

“It has allowed us to get closer to a unified position on our side of the border,” said Bennett, drawing a favourable contrast to the situation in the U.S. In crafting the American position, Bonneville and the Army Corps are overseen by a “sovereign review team” consisting of representatives of four states, 15 tribal governments and 11 federal agencies.

Hydro, for its part, is looking at three scenarios: Treaty Terminate, Treaty Continue and Treaty Plus. Preliminary details are at blog.gov.bc.ca/columbiarivertreaty/ on the government website.

Nothing is final at this point, Bennett emphasizes. But British Columbians shouldn’t worry that the downstream benefits, or the treaty itself, is under imminent threat.

“I don’t think either the U.S. or Canada will walk away from it any time soon,” he says, confident that both sides will be extremely cautious about letting that genie out of the bottle.

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